


Potential for Good

by Neyiea



Category: LazyTown
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8973436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyiea/pseuds/Neyiea
Summary: Not all good deeds are planned, sometimes they just happen.





	

Today is the type of day that Sportacus loves most of all. The sky is clear, the weather is balmy, and everyone in Lazy Town is happy.

And he really does mean everyone. During his afternoon workout routine he’d sprinted past Robbie, contently napping in a hammock that he’d strung up near the park, and Sportacus had paused just long enough to drink in the rare sight of a peaceful look on Robbie’s face before summersaulting over a wall and falling into a set of one-armed push-ups. After completing fifty on each arm he’d pushed himself up into a handstand, and then his crystal lit up for the first time since the previous day.

He arrived at the mayor’s office just in time to catch Bessie before she fell down the stairs, and then caught each of the heavy books that she’d thrown aloft as she tripped.

“Oh, thank you Sportacus.”

He smiles widely. “It’s no problem.”

He feels sufficiently warmed up, and is more than ready to see what the younger residents of Lazy Town will be up to now that school is over for the day. The kids will be easy enough to find, since he can hear them playing from all the way over here. It’s far from the loudest they’ve ever been, but at the rate they’re going something is bound to happen.

Sportacus feels the corner of his lips quirk upward. 

There’s a pattern here in Lazy Town, stretching out infinitely, and Sportacus has long since learned to take comfort in the familiarity of it.

The children will play, and they’ll get a little loud, and then out of nowhere someone ‘new’ will approach them with some sort of scheme to keep them quiet—or make Sportacus leave town, forever—and the kids will end up having even more fun than before until a slip up happens and it turns out that the new person was Robbie Rotten all along.

His smiles have probably started to become noticeably fonder every time Robbie skulks away like a mad, wet cat after his disguise has been seen through by the children. He can’t help it though, considering the soft spot that he has for the other adult.

Besides, he can’t help but note that considering how lazy Robbie claims to be, and how much he hates being active, he seems to put a lot of effort into his schemes. Sportacus might even go so far as to say that Robbie was the most active person in town other than himself, though he can only imagine the outrage that would follow such a statement if it happened to be made within Robbie’s hearing distance, which was assumedly the entire town. There’s a part of Sportacus that hopes, with each new mischievous plan that gets thrown their way, that someday soon Robbie will just admit that he actually likes spending time with them.

He flips off of the stairs that lead into the mayor’s office and cartwheels down a length of sidewalk before leaping up onto a park bench. From his spot he can see the children playing what looks like capture the flag, and he eagerly leaps off the bench to make his way towards them, but his crystal starts to glow and thrum before his feet have even touched the ground.

He briefly shuts his eyes, lets himself focus on the person his crystal is alerting him to.

“The Mayor.”

He hastily backtracks.

x-x-x

Robbie is rudely awoken from his nap by the excited laughter of children. He scowls up at the sky for a moment, huffing in displeasure, before he rolls out of his hammock to search for a quieter perch to nap on.

“Stingy, what are you doing with our team’s flag?”

“I think you mean what am I doing with my flag.”

There’s a gruff noise of irritation, and soon one of the girls, the loud one, is speed walking past him with a huff. She’s muttering to herself under her breath and doesn’t bother looking both ways before she crosses the street.

Considering how almost no one owns a car in Lazy Town perhaps it’s not completely her fault for the oversight, but it’s that one simple lack of action that makes her unaware of the wheelbarrow that’s hurtling down the street.

Robbie, admittedly clumsy and used to luck never being on his side, always looks before he crosses.

Later, if someone asks him, Robbie will say that he only did it to avoid the crying and the hysterics that would happen if any of the kids genuinely got hurt, even if it only amounted to a scraped knee and a couple of bruises, but the truth is he moves more out of instinct than anything else, darting forward and pushing the kid out of the way.

The girl stumbles and almost loses her balance, then draws in a deep breath when she whirls around to glare at him, but it escapes in a gasp as the wheelbarrow passes by, close enough that the disturbance of air causes her hair to flutter.

They stare at each other for a long moment, and Robbie allows himself to really think about what he’s just done. 

He’s saved a child.

His reputation will be ruined if this gets out. He’s already becoming less of a villain and more like a strange but bearable neighbour. The kids aren’t even properly scared of him any more, and even the smallest one has started to wave in greeting when he sees him. He can’t normalize himself any more to these people, not if he ever wants to be left alone in the peace and quiet of his underground home. 

“Don’t tell anyone about this,” he demands, and doesn’t even wait to watch the girl nod her head before he scrambles to the edge of town.

He’s had enough of the outdoors for today anyways.

Robbie only just makes it out of sight before Sportacus sails past Trixie, gaining on the runaway wheelbarrow with ease and flipping in front of it to force it to a halt.

“Are you alright Trixie?”

“Yeah,” she says, her tone subdued as her gaze flits over to something beyond where Sportacus is standing. “Yes I’m fine.” 

Sportacus glances over his shoulder and finds nothing there. No matter. He sets the wheelbarrow down at the side of the road and approaches her, laying one hand on her shoulder and discreetly checking her over to make sure that she was actually okay.

She is, which is wonderful, but also somewhat strange. His crystal doesn’t really alert him to close-calls, which is what this appears to have been. But he takes comfort in a fact that she is safe, and is happy that nothing happened while he was busy helping the Mayor.

“How about we go back to play with the other kids? I’ll join your team,” he promises with a wide smile.

Trixie blinks up at him, the dazed expression on her face quickly replaced with a childish look of irritation. “Well, maybe if you’re with us Stingy will stop acting like such a spoiled brat.” She nods to herself sharply. 

They head to the park together and Sportacus eagerly throws himself into the game, laughter and activity raising his spirits higher than ever before. Trixie seems oddly withdrawn though, so when the kids start heading home after a few hours of play Sportacus follows beside her, coming to a pause when she halts and looks up at him curiously.

“Can I do something for you?”

“It didn’t look like you were having very much fun today. I just wanted to make sure everything was alright.”

“It is, but also, not,” she sighs, irritation briefly becoming evident on her face as she turns away. “If someone did something nice for you, but asked you not to tell anyone about it, just how wrong would it be to tell?”

“If you promised not to tell then it’s probably better not to say anything, unless keeping the information to yourself could hurt someone.”

“Well, it’s not exactly like I promised,” she emphasizes the word sharply as she looks away, “not in a cross my heart and hope to die kind of way. I didn’t even pinkie swear on it!”

“Trixie, is this about earlier when I came to find you and you didn’t need help?”

“Yeah.” Her face lights up suddenly, and she turns to Sportacus with a wide smile. “Ask me more questions! They never told me I couldn’t answer questions about it.”

Sportacus raises his eyebrows in bemusement. “Did someone else help you today?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that was very good of them.” It was nice to know that he wasn’t the only one looking out for the children; as much as he loved to be of help he couldn’t be in two places at once. Trixie waves her hand in a ‘keep going’ gesture and he thinks up a new question. “Was it an adult?”

“Yes!”

“Was it…” He purses his lips and thinks about the time the accident had occurred. Most adults would have been at work still, and he can’t imagine any adult in Lazy Town not wanting people to know that they’d helped keep a child safe, except for maybe… 

“It was Robbie, wasn’t it?”

“Yes!” Trixie claps her hands together, delighted at how quickly he’d caught on. “It’s so weird, isn’t it? When he pushed me out of the way I thought he was just being mean, but he was actually being nice for once.”

“I see.” The knowledge warms his heart pleasantly. 

“I guess I’ve started to think that maybe he’s not much of a bad guy, I mean, his stupid plans never work for one thing, and sometimes we even learn a type of life lesson from it, but this sort of seals the deal that he might be good. Deep, deep down inside.”

Sportacus nods in hurried agreement, ecstatic that someone else can fully comprehend the potential for good in Robbie. He rocks on the balls of his feet slightly, unable to keep perfectly still when he’s so happy. “I think that you’re right about that. He definitely has his moments.” None of them quite so overtly praiseworthy as saving a child, which he had apparently not even wanted to take credit for.

Out of modesty? Or a desire to keep attention from being drawn to himself? Probably the latter, but that still didn’t change what he’d done.

“Yeah, well,” Trixie shrugs her shoulders. “We’ve kind of figured that if Robbie were a really bad guy you would have gotten rid of him forever,” she makes a dramatic hand motion at Robbie’s key word, “by now.”

Sportacus blanches at the statement; not just at the way the phrasing makes him sound like an executioner, but also at the idea of Robbie being gone before they’d even become proper friends. No matter how optimistic he might be he’s fairly certain that Robbie would deny any friendly feelings towards anyone in town, but especially towards Sportacus, until he was blue in the face. Thankfully Sportacus is as stubborn as he is active, and he can already tell that he’s wearing down the defensive walls that Robbie has cast around himself. It’s only a matter of time until they really are the best of friends, Sportacus can tell.

“Robbie is tricky, yes, and a bit sly, but I don’t feel he’s genuinely malicious.” He’s eaten plenty of sugar apples specifically made to give him a sugar meltdown, sure, but none of them had ever been laced with something that couldn’t be reversed, such as cyanide or arsenic. 

Trixie hums in agreement under her breath, and then casts her gaze up to the darkening sky. “I should get home. It was nice talking to you, but don’t tell anyone else what I told you! If it spreads around Robbie will know that I told.”

“I’ll keep it a secret, I promise.” He holds out a pinkie finger, and Trixie curls one of her own little fingers around it for a quick shake. 

He definitely won’t tell anyone, but he might keep a closer eye on Robbie from now on, just to see what other good deeds he might do while he thought no one was watching, or even without really meaning to.

A fond smile stretches across his face as he calls down the ladder to his airship.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I think about some of Sportacus and Robbie's interactions in the show and Sportacus just wants to be Robbie's friend so badly guys, oh my gosh.


End file.
